[DECtalk] Status of the archive

Raymond C. Grote musicalman1 at comcast.net
Sun Sep 27 13:00:31 EDT 2009


MBROLA works on windows. Yes its speech quality is good but it's a bit
difficult to get it to sing just using the editor they provide, because it
wasn't intended for that purpose. In order to make it sing good, you'd have
to spend a couple minutes  on just one or two notes. Dectalk takes a long
time but not quite as long.
I thinkt there's software around specifically to make MBROLA sing, but I
don't know what it's called, if it works, or if it's for Windows.
I like the idea of adding other synths to the archive, if the archive stays
up. There are other synths there already.
Also there's a file in the misc folder, I'm not sure what it's called, but
it was of many different eloquence voices having a meeting, but at the very
end, Eloquence sounded like it was screaming. I wonder how that was done?

-----Original Message-----
From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
[mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Tony Baechler
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:31 AM
To: DECtalk Discussions
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Status of the archive

It's interesting that you mention this.  As you say, there are other 
synths represented.  As far as I'm aware, it has never been limited to 
only the DECtalk.  I know of at least one thing done with the Apple II 
Echo and one with the Doubletalk.  I have several demos of a synth 
called Mbrola which I was thinking of adding.  Mbrola can sing and 
produces good speech quality.  The problem is that it isn't based on 
SAPI and requires all text to be sent as phonemes.  I don't know if it 
runs on Windows or not.  If people want to use other synths, that's fine 
with me.  The archive name won't change for historical interest, but I 
would be glad to split off other synths into their own archives or as a 
new section of the current archive.  I'm fairly sure that Mbrola 
requires Linux.

On 9/23/2009 12:07 AM, shaun everiss wrote:
> well I think it has, no more dectalk externals and the dectalk bar the
access32 system is becoming a quite old system.
> I think the archive should still exist for those that want to get it, but
I suspect there will probably be no real contributers.
> I think its time to change the archive, who said that dectalk could be the
only thing used.
> I wander if one should encourage other users of different synths to  do
music in those things and put it up.
> I know there are other synths up there but still I wander.
>    

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